History of Mima
by UnendingEmpire
Summary: Is she evil? Is she powerful? Yes, and yes. This story details Mima and her rise to power, her death, her rise to even more power, and even where she remains to this very day.
1. Chapter 1

**The release of Touhou 14 is a week and a half away. Get excited, people!**

**To celebrate the release of this game, I write a story about the one person who I finally acknowledge as not being the final boss. Mima. Isn't my logic wonderful sometimes? Though deep down, I still think it'll be her, despite the cover looking nothing like her, and despite ZUN himself saying in an interview that while the PC-98 crew is still around, they won't be appearing in games.**

**If Alice can make a comeback two games after her last appearance, Mima sure as hell can come back at any time, so I like to be prepared. I also have a bet going to see if I'll suddenly like another DDC character better than Sekibanki once the full version is released. I say I won't; he says "You say Sekibanki is the best now, but when the full version comes out you'll like somebody else better." He even took a screenshot of our chat so he can rub it in if I'm wrong. Except I won't be wrong.**

**So, this story's about Mima, from youth to how she became a witch, to how she died, to blah blah blah, all the way up to where she is and what she's doing to this day. This story, I won't forgive myself for abandoning a few chapters in. It's pretty much the biography of my favorite character, but I'm going to let you read now ^_^**

* * *

The summer air was warm and crisp in Gensokyo. It was, frankly put by the youkai who created it, "the new world." A world crafted separate from the unkind lands beyond its mysterious borders, where youkai could live in…relative peace, with the humans who also called that world home. Or, at least, each could live without fear of extinction from the other, thanks to the rules of combat implemented and enforced by the Hakurei shrine maiden; some new thing called "danmaku." Indeed, it put humans and youkai on equal terms, and even mewling children could defeat the mighty gap youkai who created Gensokyo if they trained hard enough. On the note of children…

"And fly~!" There was one particular child in the Human Village who had been trying to fly like the Hakurei shrine maiden. This was her thirty-seventh attempt this week, and it was only Monday. Like the thirty-six times before it, the girl fell flat on her face, her green hair as smooth a contrast to the grass below as her blue dress was to the sky up above. If she'd landed on her back, her green eyes would have also been a nice sight, but they were currently busy being thankful that the girl was smart enough to put something thick and soft - her futon - on the ground in case she didn't fly. She'd tried all sorts of things. Jumping normally, jumping with birds, jumping then flapping her arms as though she were a bird herself, and one particular idea that involved the nearest tree, her futon, a sheep, and a whole lot of rope. Like all the other kids predicted, none of her ideas quite worked, no matter how much of a smart cookie she was. Plenty of kids - the vast majority of male kids, which becomes important later - simply laughed. One of them, on the other hand, didn't. Another girl, who instead pulled the not-flying child up to her feet.

"I was _this close_," she proclaimed once she was up on her feet, brushing off her clothes for whatever imaginary dust may have gotten there mid-fall.

"You'll get it someday for sure," her friend cheered on. "I don't think any of the children are as smart as you, Mima."

"But the Hakurei miko's child can fly, and she's younger than me! She's only five. _Five!_ I can still count her age with one hand, for crying out loud!" Mima was not pleased with that fact - also something that becomes important later - that the Hakurei child could so naturally accomplish what Mima - in her eight years spent in Gensokyo, those being her entire life - had failed to do after countless attempts. She saw people fly in the skies, and wanted to be up there with them. What did they all have that she didn't? Short of the boys who simply laughed at Mima's failed attempts at flying, pretty much everybody liked Mima. Even the Hakurei miko would say on her trips to the Human Village, "That Mima is such a little ball of enthusiasm. It's good that young people are so eager to fulfill their dreams." Even if her dream was nothing more than flying, it was something to aspire to, and Mima worked at it every day. And every day, she fell flat on her face, getting no closer to her dream of flight. Birds could do it just fine, and there were days when Mima just wanted to sit down and have a lengthy chat with them to learn their secrets. Having wings might have helped, but that couldn't have been the only way to fly. Humans and wingless youkai did it every day!

_Gowllllll… _For now, though, it was time to eat. Mima lived with her friend, since nobody was really sure where she came from. Only that she was born in Gensokyo, and randomly got left at the Hakurei Shrine when she was still a baby. She was promptly brought to the Human Village and raised by a willing family with a daughter about the same age. Ever since, Mima had lived with them, and even if she knew they weren't her parents, they may as well have been. Picking up her futon - with the aid of her friend, since an eight-year-old isn't exactly the kind of person who is expected to lift such things alone - she made her way back inside. Already, she could smell cooking. That was good. Even if Mima didn't have a notorious appetite, the brown-haired girl on the other end of the futon certainly did. A bottomless pit, people called her, astounded at how she could eat like that and not gain any weight.

"Mama," the brown-haired girl asked. "What are you cooking?"

"A special recipe for curry and rice I got. Miss Fujiwara was kind enough to supply me with this recipe, and I've heard she's quite the cook. It's nearly done now."

"Yummy…"

"You're drooling," Mima commented.

"Oh!" With no time wasted, the fine friend/sister-figure of Mima brought her hand up to wipe her mouth clean of food-fantasy-induced drool. Which resulted in all the weight of the futon being left for Mima to carry. Which resulted in it plummeting to the floor and the forces of inertia and gravity causing her to - once again - fall on the futon in all its soft glory. She was only eight, after all. The family laughed, but it wasn't as bitter or mocking as the laughter from earlier. More of the kind of laugh somebody laughs when their friend or family member hurts themselves in a hilarious way, and the laugh comes right before "Are you okay?" In this case, those words followed the laugh, as is the tradition with laughs such as this one.

"I'm fine," Mima stated, getting back up. The front of her hair was a bit of a mess, which she knew when she could see several green locks in her field of vision, where they weren't supposed to be. Adjusting those until everything was right again, Mima sorely wished she had a hat. As it was, her head was always uncovered save the streaming hair of green that reached to her waist. She had that kind of face that when a child had it, it was obvious she'd be beautiful. Her friend also had such a face, but if her weight ever caught up to her eating, those looks would be sorely ruined. Whether they did or not was certainly left to the choices of time, but the future was hardly a concern in the relatively carefree Human Village. With Fujiwara no Mokou - an immortal who drank the Hourai Elixir - in town to protect the humans, nobody dared to mess with the village. Not that many youkai planned to anyway; the youkai of 1,300 years ago were a pretty decent lot, but that didn't mean humans liked them. It made raising the children - including Mima - smooth and easy, and the kids were happy with life. Gensokyo was certainly the wonderland its creators promised.

Not that Mima understood its greatness compared to the outside world. She'd been born in Gensokyo, after all, not at all unlike the other children in the village. Of course, Mima was quite a bit brighter than the others. Not really that they were dumb, so much as she was just really smart. Best grades in the village's school, always figuring out something new, and as a general rule, boasting the signs of a genius child. Maybe that was why she wanted so badly to fly. So that, rather than just wondering what the sky was like, she could go up there and see for herself firsthand. That was something she wanted to know; what was the sky like? Was it cold up there? The youkai who came to the village now and then - mostly tengu or kappa running errands for their oni masters - often talked about how it was chilly near the top of the mountain, where the oni lived. Oni accounts of it being chilly up there were unknown to the humans, since the two species didn't interact much in Gensokyo. Some saw that as a good thing, at least. Mima, for one, was curious as to what they were like. Maybe one day, she'd meet the oni herself. It was good to have dreams.

"Food's done!"

"Oh!" Mima's attention snapped right over to the finished food. "It looks great, ma'am!" Calling the woman by her family name felt weird, and she sure as hell wasn't Mima's mom. So "ma'am" was her choice of terms to address her best friend's mother by, likewise using "sir" for the father. Even though they were the closest things Mima had to parents, it wasn't like she was ready to call them mom and dad. If anybody deserved the "mom" title in Mima's head, it was probably the schoolteacher. A kind soul if ever there was one, her, with so much wisdom it was as though she were made of the stuff. Mima greatly admired her. It was also her teacher who most often told her "Humans can fly just as well as birds, if we set our minds to it."

"Hey," Mima's friend said, nudging her a little from the seat to her left. "You look all lost in thought again. What's up?"

"Thinking about sensei," Mima truthfully answered. "You know what I noticed? The Hakurei miko doesn't seem to trust her. Isn't that weird?" Why was that? Whenever the teacher was in the room, the Hakurei miko kept a really close eye on her. The two had tense conversations behind closed doors, often warning the teacher to leave things as they were. Was there something Mima was missing? Loose ends really bugged her. She had to plan a plan, but first, she'd eat. The first bite went in, and Mima's eyes widened in surprise. _It's amazing! I don't think I've ever eaten anything like this before! Mokou had this recipe sitting around all this time, and didn't ever think about sharing it with the rest of us? I'm so glad she finally shared it!_ It was so good, she couldn't wait to eat the next bite. Before she knew it, she was the fastest eater at the table, but it was when the eating stopped that everybody sort of stared at her. Why were they staring? She opened her mouth to ask, but even after swallowing, her question sounded more akin to "Koff-fnga-faern?" That was when Mima stopped dead in her tracks too. It took a few seconds to realize why she felt kind of funny, while everybody else looked fine. Food poisoning? To check, Mima looked at her hands. Red. Swollen. Totally food poisoning. Panic ensued.

Mima was coughing from who-knew-what kind of food poisoning, her friend was screaming for help to whoever could hear her and help, the father was running out to go get help, and the mother was trying to get Mima to cough out whatever she'd eaten that was bad for her. That was all she remembered, at least. After a few moments of that panic, all Mima would be able to recall was passing out from lack of airflow. But to call her dead wasn't at all an accurate statement.

* * *

**One hour later; location unfamiliar to Mima…**

The next thing Mima - to this very day - was able to account for was feeling something soft over the majority of her body, on a surface she didn't recognize, with the sound of a fire cooking something. Her insides felt like they'd just switched places with her outsides, and said outsides weren't feeling much better. Wherever she was, the next thing anybody there heard was the sound of Mima violently awakening by howling in the pain that felt like she'd been turned inside-out and tightly gripping the sides of her head in an attempt to make it not hurt as much. She kept her eyes shut, slamming her eyelids together as though trying to make her eyeballs feel like they _weren't_ indeed popping out of their sockets. Just why was she hurting so much?

"Here, drink this," a voice quickly told her. "Or that pain won't subside anytime soon."

Even if opening her mouth hurt, and swallowing the drink did more, Mima was told that drinking whatever this was would get rid of the pain. She wasn't sure about that, but she'd rather take the chance than not. As promised, her pain began to melt with the seconds that ticked by. On the count of ten such seconds, she didn't feel any pain. Now it didn't burn her lungs to breathe, and now she could open her eyes without a searing pain shooting through them. When she did, she saw a ceiling she recognized. That of the schoolhouse. And standing over her was…

"Glad to see you're alright," the teacher said. "You gave everybody quite a scare, Mima."

* * *

**To clarify, the teacher isn't Keine. Otherwise, I'd have said so.**

**Technically, I love Mima and Ruukoto equally, but Mima has more traits I love, so when I have to pick **_**one**_** to be my favorite, it's typically Mima. What's not to love?**

**I'm apparently a sucker for green-haired characters, long hair is also a plus when it's done properly, and that's just the start. Her design as a whole is pretty cool, and I love characters with feathered wings. Bat wings are okay too, but I'd rather find myself wrapped up in Utsuho's wings as opposed to Remilia's any day. She boasts immense power, and enough charisma to make Remi - typically seen as being the most charismatic - lose all semblance of charisma forever. She's also dead, which is another trait I tend to fall for. And yet, despite all these factors culminating to make her my favorite, I have no interest in Mima porn.**

**Probably because I tend to like more submissive characters, or ones who can be on either end. Like Ruukoto. Or Utsuho. Parsee is also nice, but none of those three are in this. It's about Mima.**

**M. I. M. A.**

**Not them. Good lord, my notes are long in this chapter, aren't they? I refused to let myself sleep last night until this chapter was done (but it's only 10PM as I type this, lol) so now, probably about 12 hours later, here I am again. UnendingEmpire, writer extraordinaire, at your humble service.**

**Oh, last thing. If my writing seems to lack a few qualities, I realized why. See, I think in images and sounds as opposed to words, so writing in text can be kind of difficult for me sometimes. However, I also have RPG Maker (VX Ace, if you want to know the version) and am actually pretty handy with it. I'm currently planning out a Touhou fan-RPG that uses only PC-98 characters, with a total of nine playable characters. They are:  
Ruukoto, Orange, Meira, Sara, four more girls you unlock by beating those routes, and a ninth you can only get by beating all eight other routes. Akyu is the narrator, and you play as her for a very short time when picking your character.**

**Leave your reviews and look forward to the next chapter! :D**


	2. Chapter 2

**Ugh…you probably noticed how short this chapter was.**

**I'll explain at the end, okay?**

* * *

"Sensei…where am I? Wait, what happened to begin with!? Where's-"

"Shhhh. You're fine," the teacher reassured. "As it turns out, you're allergic to mushrooms. There were a whole lot of them in that recipe, so it's a wonder you survived long enough for me to cure you. Your friend is at home. She blames herself for what happened."

"She was always kind of like that…" The sharp-minded ones, or the elders of the Human Village, were the ones who tended to notice that particular feature of Mima's dear friend. It seemed that whoever she was around for too long died. The causes tended to vary, but die they did. "You told her I was fine, right? Yuyuko gets really scared when people die." To those who had trouble believing it, the words were simply enough repeated. Mima was the best friend and foster sister of one Yuyuko Saigyouji. "Saigyouji" was just her family name for now, though. The last three sets of parents she had all died, and the next unlucky couple was the one the two girls lived with now. In retrospect, the "people around Yuyuko tend to die" phenomenon was probably another good reason why people tended to not hang around her. Some people worried about Mima because of it; always certain she was next.

"Yes, she's well aware that you're fine. I wanted to ask you something, though. Why do you always try to fly?"

"O-Oh, that…you'll just think it's silly."

"Humans can fly just as well as birds if we try hard enough. Nothing is silly."

"I want to fly," Mima confessed. "That's my dream in life; to be able to jump up and take to the skies like a bird or a tengu. I'd like to be able to look down and see all the little people running around doing their things every day. It's silly, right?"

"Not at all. I've met humans who fly every day. Why, there are even humans who can turn themselves into birds and fly like that!" Mima looked awestruck at the idea of turning into a bird. But, like all things, turning into a bird required patience. "Maybe someday, you'll meet somebody who can teach you how to do those kinds of things. Until then, you should rest a little."

"Right…"

* * *

**I promised an explanation, so here goes…**

**I'm retiring from fanfic-writing, and decided to at least leave what I had of this chapter. Every day, it's "I should write that" with a whole new scenario, only for it to meet the exact same one-chapter length. Two, if it's lucky. One-shots don't really feel right for me to write at home, but you might catch one from me once in a blue moon on MoTK if you hang out there. Maybe I'll just grab those and put them here from now on =.= I'm not really sure.**

**The story of it is, I can't keep doing this to stories that really do deserve more than what I can give them as I am. Will I come back to fanfic writing someday? Who knows? For now, consider me retired and done ^_^ but I do want to at least leave behind the critical points of Mima's story.**

**Her (current) set of parents, having Yuyuko living with them, will die. That night, Mima's teacher would have kidnapped her, spreading false rumors that she too had died. Said teacher who always remains nameless would have then lied to Mima, saying that YUYUKO was the one who died, and that there was a way to bring her back. This would lead to Mima becoming an apprentice witch, and after some years of grueling training, she'd emerge as the badass witch we all know and love. When I said last chapter that the whole "only boys made fun of her" thing would be important, it's because one of her first actions as a witch is to slaughter any male she comes across. Which may or may not account for the current lack of Y chromosomes in Gensokyo, by the by.**

**In the midst of it all, who else would she encounter but Yuyuko. This confuses her, followed by the delusion that she was delusional (delusionception?) and that the only answer was to destroy everything in sight. Yuyuko, given her odd powers to cause death, blames herself, and undergoes the knife suicide people like to say she did. Mima is left with one person to kill - Mokou - who, rather than dying, kills Mima the witch with a knife. Which turns her into Mima the ghost, who we saw in Highly Responsive to Prayers. After the events of HRtP, it stands to reason that she'd gone to Gensokyo to pursue the Hakurei power, which was greater than her own. Here she met Marisa as shown in A Magician's Chronicle, and the rest is history.**

**As for where she is now, this story was going to employ a theory rather different from the usual one of "she's hanging around the Hakurei Shrine." Instead, her defeat at Reimu's hands between Mystic Square and EoSD was shortly followed by sealing the ghost up in a place where there was somebody stronger than her: Makai. Since, she's been hanging out at the passage between Gensokyo and Makai, watching Marisa grow and develop her powers from afar. It's kind of a sad ending, but I think the end of my career - not to sound arrogant - may be sadder still.**

**So send me a PM if you want to talk, be it here or on other websites. Wherever you can find me, I'll definitely be under the name UnendingEmpire.**

**I hope to hear from you soon~**


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